A big reason I was able to retire before age 40, was that I had a high wage job as an engineer in the oil & gas industry, but lived in a city (Houston, TX) where you could rent a comfortable garden apartment with a pool and a tennis court for $500 or $600/month. Treating real estate as an expense to be minimized rather than as an investment, allowed me to plow a much larger percentage of my gross salary into the stock market where I received much higher investment returns.

The Top 3 expenses for most people are Housing, Food, and Transportation. There's often a lot of low-hanging fruit to cut.

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